[Info-vax] VMS MAIL: PURGE/RECLAIM or COMPRESS?

[DJ]

On Sep 14, 9:44 am, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
> Which is better?  PURGE/RECLAIM locks the mail file for longer.  Do both
> have ultimately the same effect?

About two years ago, I was a system manager on a GS80 that was used as
an email system as part of its function at a local university. To make
the mail.mai file to perform better, I used a convert without a FDL on
the old file, created a new file, purge the mail file, and rename the
new file to have a version of one. What this does is to defrag the
mail file and keeps the file the same size as the old file. I set this
up in a scheduler job and ran it at about 3:00 am once a week. A list
of email files that couldn't be converted was generated and printed
out.  If what you wanted to do was to decrease the file size, then I
would use Hein's suggestion of creating a FDL file to redesign the
mail file to the new size. This email system was processing about
90,000 to 175,000 emails in the first eight hours of the day. I think
we average over 350,000 email a day.

Regards,
Daryl Jones